It’s a banal truism to say that the Bond movies are reactionary narratives festooned with phallic symbols. The movies’ makers were in on the joke — Ayn Rand, who adored the books, was appalled by the film versions’ campiness — but that hasn’t stopped amateur psychoanalysts from scrutinizing the Bond movies’ pistols, cars, and rockets through Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian lenses for four decades now. Forget the phalli — what’s with the uterine imagery in these flicks? The caves, the tight spots, particularly the tubs and showers! In this all-too-typical scene from Thunderball, Bond (Sean Connery) discovers a lathered-up Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) in a hotel bathroom. This is ostensibly an erotically charged moment… but how can it be so when Bond isn’t shocked to find Fiona there, nor is she horrified to be found? The next morning, after a night of apparent passion, it is revealed that they’d both been faking it. Poor misunderstood Bond. He’s no phallic narcissist seeking power and control; instead, he’s a hopeless neurotic endlessly and fruitlessly seeking to discharge psychic tension via a sex/death-enabled return to the womb.

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An occasional series analyzing some of the author’s favorite moments in the positioning or movement of actors in a movie.